A socialist, a libertarian and a anarchist walk into a bar. what happens next?

If you want to allocate 15% of your funds to save up for healthcare and tuition, be my guest. But for those of us who would seek alternative (noncovered) medicines or who would prefer to learn from a library rather than at a university, we should not be called upon to pay for things we intrinsically disagree with. I happen to disagree very much with a lot of western medicine (especially the approach to cancer); why would I want my money to support that? Can I decide which medicines my tax dollars with subsidize? Of course not.

*will subsidize

Fascinating. I love eastern philosophy. Its just hard to actually relax in the internet age.

I should have left this thread long ago and gone to bed... but I'm still. here... why?

Final word: I do not propose yanking away all government any time soon (and we'll always need the courts, the military, and some form of police). I just hope to someday see a human race that can take care of itself and its loved ones without being forced to. I mean how freaking awful is it that we need laws to force us to care about eachother and be charitable? I say we're taking the wrong approach by LEGISLATING HUMANITY.

Wah! I don't want to do that! Don't make me! Wah!
I just read The Virtue of Selfishness. Wah!

@Jeff

Another brilliant non-post from webdip ubiquitous. This site's full of wussies.

@Psilosha: Personal greed is harmless? Tell that to the thousands of people who die of poverty every day, worldwide. Without personal greed, they'd all be saved. The reason we need governments to intervene with our lives to begin with is because we're too greedy to pay for eachother's needs.

That's more like it but your post is SO unpalatable that I'm not even going to try. Why are people dying of poverty? Personal greed? Laughable, Steephie. A lack of personal greed may save them but that's only assuming that without greed, people would give to charity. Greed didn't cause their poverty in the first place. Greed is not to be blamed. Indeed a lack of charity cannot be blamed either. There are other circumstances in each situation.

Look also, in these individual situations, for oppression brought on by monetary systems like central banks and government institutions.

Thanks for playing.

By the way, it helps to read the thread folks. Forcing someone to give make monetary charitable donations to relieve world poverty is not going to solve any cause of said poverty. In case you haven't been reading: force and violence solves nothing. If you believe in peace then you believe in limited government, simple as that.

@brainbomb--"Someone please explain what the money from the fines goes too."

The money isn't really the issue. Participation is the issue.

One of the basic goals of the health insurance system is to make healthcare affordable for people who really need it. That means passing on some of those costs to others, by putting low-risk and high-risk people in the same insurance pool. The insurance companies need to charge enough to cover the average cost of care (and then some, presumably). But the healthiest people would rationally pay less without insurance than they would with insurance; unless they're risk-averse, they'll exit the insurance pool. But then the average cost of coverage for the pool goes up, so the insurance companies need to raise rates, which leads to more people leaving...and the vicious cycle renders the insurance system useless for achieving one of its basic goals.

The fine is meant to make sure people participate who wouldn't otherwise participate, so that risk pooling can function.

Yes, this is a miserable kludge to make up for the lack of single-payer healthcare or other similar system. Yes, it's also rather a perversion of how insurance typically works.

@Psilosha, you're not wrong that misuse of government is extremely dangerous (one needs only look to e.g. Stalin and Mao for examples), but determining what is correct use of government is extremely complicated and contentious, and there are degrees and degrees of misuse, not all of which can be fairly lumped under the "greatest threat to humanity" label you'd like to use. For example, "misusing" government by taxing for mandated public education is a little different from "misusing" government to engineer famines that kill 50 million people. So until you inject a little more nuance into your approach, you're not really grappling with that issue in a useful way.

Did that paragraph say anything at all?

Of course, I could say the same for steephie22's canard that greed causes deprivation--greed has many and complicated effects on society, a number of which are positive, so even though there's lots of shitty things about greed we can't just fix society by getting rid of greed.

Maybe I did not pick the right word, then. The whole idea of ownership, combined with the idea of 'the more you own, the better', probably best summarized as the idea of 'mine, not yours', is all the justification most people need to walk past starving people without thinking 'Geeh, maybe they need this sandwich more than I do'.

As for who's to blame, while that's not an irrelevant question, it changes nothing about the fact that we can save them.

The thought that you should only fix something if you broke it is pretty poisoning as well.

It doesn't matter (here*) what the taxed funds are used for = that's a different story. The actual accrual of said funds is what is unethical, regardless of the usage. The taxation for any cause, wicked or righteous, is what is in question here. There are perhaps gradients of government misuse. But the taxation ITSELF is an act of force which constitutes the threat to humanity (which is often defined by autonomy, cooperation, and love). Force (violence) in any form is the greatest threat to humanity and I stand by that statement.

It is only justifiable to tax people to pay for services individuals cannot provide themselves: national defense, court systems, interpretation and execution of laws (which are restricted to preventing violence among citizens).

Disappointing: weak sauce from a post that began so well and from someone with a name that evokes logic.

I wish more libertarians would actually try to imagine a scenario where a non-governmental entity tried to force them to do something against their will, likely in violation of any mutual agreement. IT HAPPENS.

Then where is your recourse, another corporation? Libertarians spend too much time trying to tear down the only legitimate representation they may have when facing a much better funded and socially powerful entity.

Steephie -- human nature to help one another should and must be voluntary. To force what makes us human (helping one another) takes away our souls as human beings. To have to be forced to help one in need may be akin to a sin, perhaps, but it is not something the government should be forced to do.

Steephie, I deeply feel your concern here and I want to help as much as you do. Forcing people to help who do not want to is a sin, perhaps, in and of itself.

Jeff there are laws to prevent anyone from forcing you to do anything. Likely, the only thing out there that can aptly force you to do anything against your will is the law itself, not ANY non-government entity that does not have coercive (governmental favors) power. Your confusing anarchy with libertarianism, Jeff. Your astute comment about Rand is now meaningless! You obviously have not read enough if you do not understand the difference.

Give me an example, Jeff, of a non governmental entity forcing you to do something against your will where there wasn't a law backing it up. Keep in mind there are laws that enforce contracts.

You officially do not know what you're talking about.

Psilosha, you went on at length about how "misuse of government" is the greatest danger to mankind, and then identified taxing for public education and socialized Western medicine (calling upon you to pay for something you fundamentally disagree with) as misuse of government. I'm just pointing out that you're investing those policy preferences with the moral weight of ALL misuse of government, which is unjustified.

Also READ THE THREAD.

Force is what the government operates on. Force and only force, Leth. Misuse of force, therefore, is what we're talking about.
AND THAT IS THE GREATEST THREAT TO MANKIND: MISUSED VIOLENCE, MISUSED FORCE.

Am I talking to a WALL HERE?

there are gradients to the travesties, yes, Leth, but force is intrinsically evil in my mind. Call me a hippy, Leth, but I DESPISE violence.

And whenever the government operates, it is via violence or via the threat of violence. There is no other way that government operates. This is basic stuff.

@Psilosha: I never said force them. You either have me confused with someone else or you're making wrong assumptions.

It was an argument for why 'personal greed', which I later specified to make sure we're talking about the same thing, is worse than government.

At this point it's probably an empty debate though. I think we got our points across.

Steephie, I make it a point in my life to transcend my own shallow needs to look at what is truly going on and try to make a difference. Steephie, if you really do want to make a difference for the poor, look into the Federal Reserve and fractional reserve lending. It sounds boring but it will knock your socks off and put a fire in your heart.

Inflation is a prime evil. The devaluation of currency is an active theft against the poorest in the world.